Engineers In Business Winner pAiback

Have you seen the winners of our 2024 Champion of Champions competition?

pAiback, the innovative AI-powered platform that ensures travellers never overpay for flights, has been shortlisted for the Engineers in Business Fellowship (EIBF) Champion of Champions Competition where finalists compete for a share of the £16,500 prize pot, which includes seed funding, mentoring, and exposure to business leaders. The competition, held at the Royal Academy of Engineering on 7-8 November 2024, showcases innovative ideas from engineering students who have already won university enterprise competitions.

pAiback was founded and developed by University of Southampton aeronautical engineering PHD student, Morgan Taylor, alongside co-founders Tom Alner and Jason Lucking. The idea for pAiback originated from Morgan’s personal experience of noticing significant price drops in flights after booking. The platform takes advantage of dynamic pricing and the removal of change fees, using real-time price monitoring to automatically secure refunds or e-credits when prices drop after booking. Unlike other price protection services, pAiback offers full transparency and unlimited savings on a win-win, commission-only basis.

The EIBF is a registered charity that champions business education for engineers and promotes the development of innovative ideas through enterprise competitions. Their Champion of Champions Competition invites winning teams from EIBF-supported universities to present innovative ideas that solve real-world problems. pAiback emerged from the UoS Student Enterprise Fund BUILD Pathway, where Morgan Taylor won a prize funded by EIBF. Teams entering the final must include engineering students or engineers, and Morgan’s venture represents the kind of impactful solution EIBF seeks to aims to celebrate, with a focus on developing commercial skills alongside engineering expertise.

The University of Southampton’s Student Enterprise team is excited to support pAiback’s journey, as it promises to revolutionise air travel by putting the power of savings back into the hands of consumers.

And the winners are?

Held at the Royal Academy of Engineering, the competition featured engineering students from across the country pitching bold, innovative and impactful business ideas.

The top prizes were awarded to ⬇️

🏅 Big Ideas Prize: The Algae Photobioreactor from Cardiff University / Prifysgol Caerdydd for a compact bioreactor that captures carbon as effectively as 50 trees.

🏅 Startup Prize: Medscribe from the University of Nottingham for an AI-driven tool to reduce clinician paperwork.

🏅 Enterprise Award: pAiback from University of Southampton for a system that secures automatic savings on airfares.

Congratulations to all the winners and students who took part in this year’s competition.